Who was driving the Murdaugh boat that killed Mallory Beach in 2019?
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2019 Boat Crash Coverage
The crash of a Murdaugh family boat in 2019 killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach and started a chain of events that would remain in the news two years later. Here are the stories from that crash.
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This story first published July 8, 2021.
In the aftermath of a 2019 boat crash that killed Mallory Beach, law enforcement officials struggled to determine who was driving, according to new court documents.
In depositions filed Thursday as part of a civil petition from one of those on the boat when it crashed, four law enforcement officers testified they received conflicting accounts from passengers, including Paul Murdaugh.
They told police they didn’t know who was driving. One person said it was Murdaugh; another said it was passenger Connor Cook.
Later, the S.C. Attorney General’s office indicted Murdaugh on felony charges of boating under the influence. He pleaded not guilty.
The question of who was responsible for the crash might have been put to rest with Murdaugh’s criminal trial. But before a trial date was set, Murdaugh was found shot to death, along with his mother, at their Colleton County estate on June 7.
The investigation into their deaths led to more questions about the boat crash.
The depositions filed Thursday were exhibits attached to a civil petition filed by a lawyer for Connor Cook, one of six passengers aboard the Sea Hunt boat when it crashed near Parris Island in February 2019. Cook, according to the petition, alleges some law enforcement officers may know about intentions to hamper the crash investigation and shift blame away from the now-deceased Murdaugh — who was ultimately charged in the crash.
Law enforcement did not make it clear in initial reports who was driving the boat. As The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette newspapers previously reported, the Attorney General’s office has opened an investigation into how police handled the boat crash investigation.
Here’s what the new depositions reveal in the debate over who was driving the boat:
Paul Murdaugh
Austin Pritcher, an officer with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources, arrived at Beaufort Memorial Hospital and first went into Paul Murdaugh’s room in the hours after the boat crash.
Pritcher’s job: “figure out who was driving the boat,” he told lawyers in his deposition.
Pritcher testified that the nurse told him Murdaugh was acting “out of control” and had a security guard stationed outside his room. Murdaugh seemed intoxicated, he said, and was wearing only boxers.
Pritcher asked him if he knew who was driving the boat.
Murdaugh said he wasn’t.
“Why do you need to know who was driving[?] That isn’t going to help find Mallory,” Murdaugh said, according to Pritcher’s original report. “What if it was me driving the boat[?]”
Pritcher said he left to interview other passengers. He came back to take Murdaugh’s official statement of what happened and was interrupted by two Murdaugh family members: father Alex and grandfather Randolph III.
Alex Murdaugh, a personal injury attorney and volunteer prosecutor, and Randolph Murdaugh III, the former 14th Circuit Solicitor, came into the hospital room and stopped Pritcher.
“They came in and said Paul’s not saying anything else, and I told them I’m talking to Paul and they said no, you’re talking to us now,” Pritcher said in his deposition.
Alex Murdaugh owned the Sea Hunt boat that crashed.
Michael Brock, former DNR investigator who now works for S.C. Law Enforcement Division, was the “point man” of the boat crash investigation. He and Pritcher were gathering information early on.
Brock wrote in a report that he asked Pritcher to take field sobriety tests for both Cook and Murdaugh.
Murdaugh was never tested. Cook was asked, but he refused.
Pritcher said he didn’t remember ever being asked to test Murdaugh, and that he would’ve done it if Brock asked him.
Anthony Cook
Anthony Cook, Mallory Beach’s boyfriend, has maintained that Paul Murdaugh was driving the boat when it crashed.
In a Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office report, Cook told former deputy Stephen Domino at the scene of the crash that Murdaugh was driving before it wrecked. Domino wrote that in his report.
According to the new depositions, Anthony Cook said that to DNR officer Pritcher as well. The two were speaking in Domino’s car; the conversation was captured by the in-car dash camera video.
Cook told Pritcher that Paul Murdaugh was driving.
In a later statement, however, Pritcher said he wrote down Cook didn’t know who was driving.
A lawyer for Mallory Beach’s family, Mark Tinsley, played back the video for him.
“I put in my statement that Anthony said he didn’t know, but listening to that video if he told me Paul, I would only assume that I put down that he told me Paul,” Pritcher said.
Additionally, the deposition for Cpl. John Keener with the Sheriff’s Office states that Anthony Cook tried to fight Paul Murdaugh immediately after the crash and had to be held back.
“[He] needs to rot in f------ prison,” Cook said, according to deposition testimony. “He ain’t going to get in no f----- trouble.”
Asked about this, Keener said it indicated to him who the driver was.
“He was trying to fight the Murdaugh kid,” Keener said. “So that’s why we thought the Murdaugh kid was driving at the time.”
Connor Cook
Connor Cook’s name is often mentioned alongside Paul Murdaugh’s in the case. Law enforcement officials were trying to determine whether Cook or Murdaugh was driving and were unsure, according to documents.
Initially, Cook told a DNR officer he didn’t know who was driving when the boat crashed, according to former DNR officer Robin Camlin in her deposition.
In his own deposition filed as part of the civil suit, Connor Cook later told a lawyer he said that because Paul Murdaugh’s father, Alex, told him not to talk.
“Well, I was told for one by Alex Murdaugh that I didn’t need to tell anyone who was driving,” he said.
In that January 2020 deposition, Connor Cook was clear: Paul was driving the boat.
Things were less clear immediately after the crash.
DNR officer Pritcher testified he offered Cook a field sobriety test and that he refused.
Additionally, Pritcher was focused on Cook and Murdaugh as the potential driver because “those were the two names that I was getting from the .... police officers that were at the scene.”
A lawyer asked Pritcher about a supplement report, where his supervisor, Adam Henderson, called him at the hospital and said Connor Cook may have been the boat driver.
Pritcher said he didn’t remember that — or why Henderson might have said that.
Morgan Doughty
When Pritcher came in to interview Morgan Doughty, Paul Murdaugh’s girlfriend at the time, he said she was “skittish” and “freaked out.” She said Paul’s father, Alex, was trying to get into her room.
Alex Murdaugh then came in and had to be escorted out, according to the deposition.
Doughty then gave her first statement.
“Connor was driving because Paul was too drunk to drive,” she said.
The nurse in the room with Doughty wrote in her records that afterwards “when her mom got there, she wasn’t sure if her first statement was right or wrong.”
Her mother said she could give another statement after some sleep.
Doughty texted Pritcher, and they met to take a new statement. No recordings of the change were taken, the deposition said, and the new statement isn’t reflected in the documents.
In Doughty’s own deposition filed later, however, she said she was not able to see who was driving when the boat crashed. Doughty said Paul Murdaugh was driving before that.
Miley Altman
Miley Altman, Connor Cook’s girlfriend, was in the same hospital room as Connor Cook when Pritcher arrived.
Altman said she didn’t remember who was driving, according to the deposition.
“We all of a sudden were right in front of the bridge and it came out of nowhere,” Altman wrote in her statement. “Next thing I know, we are all screaming, and I checked on my friends and my best friend [Mallory] is missing. She’s gone.”
Pritcher had Altman and other passengers draw a diagram of where everyone was sitting in the boat.
The lawyer for the Beach family asked whether the diagram that Altman drew put Murdaugh behind the steering wheel of the boat.
Pritcher said yes.
This story was originally published July 8, 2021 at 9:49 AM with the headline "Who was driving the Murdaugh boat that killed Mallory Beach in 2019?."
